A big day out and Silly Saturday

Where’s Wally? Seen at Circular Quay dashing to the toilets. It would have been better if he was in a crowd which was outside due to the 5000 people waiting to embark on this monster ship. 

We had a big day. Walked to the station and caught the morning Bullet train to Sydney. It goes twice each morning from Bathurst and takes hours to get to Sydney at an average speed of about 60kph. Whoever named it had a sense of humour. We changed trains at Sydney Central to Circular Quay where we had lunch and a walk up to the Botanic Gardens. Next was a rivercat ferry to Rydlemere which is an hour journey up the Parramatta River. We walked to the venue and met up with family and friends of Grange, our old walking buddy and holiday companion. 

Grange was an artist working in advertising and cartoons in the 70s and 80s. He wrote books and was an all round funny guy with an insane sense of humour. We only knew him in later years when our daughter married his son, so we had shared grandchildren and saw him regularly for the last 10 years especially while his health was in decline and we minded his little foxy Porridge who starred in many blips. Grange was best known for the Roobarb and Custard cartoon and many familiar sketches and illustrations on everyday products. His latest was the Sniffe &Likkit illustrations for doggie products which won a prize these last few years. 

We had to leave after a few hours and walked to the bus stop (along with Maddy who decided to come home a day earlier), bus to Parramatta and Bullet home. Unfortunately the Bullet came to a complete standstill at Wallerawang for the best part of an hour as some young people had covered the tracks with rocks. The police were involved from the neighbouring town and we didn’t get home until 10.30. This is therefore a backblip as I was too tired to post last night.

My back doesn’t enjoy the public transport so I dosed up on pills. Good news it only cost $2.50 for a full day’s travel as I have a Seniors Opal card.